Category: Feature Friday

Are you a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, an imam, or a religious leader of any kind? Then we have an important message for you!

We know that your place of worship is special to you and your community. It is a place of love, trust, community, and faith. You feel safe there, and you want your congregation to be safe there as well.

Most churches these days have internet access. It’s a great resource for teaching and learning. But, as you know, many portions of the internet are predatory and unholy. Pornography has no place in your worship– for good reason! How can you utilize all the best of the internet without exposing your congregation to dangerous content?

Here at Clean Router, we want to help you protect your holy place. Our filtering technology blocks online pornography at the door. No matter how many or what kind of wi-fi capable devices come through your doors, our Clean Router will filter every single one. No one will be able to use your internet connection to access pornography.

A holy place should be a safe place. Let Clean Router protect your church and give you online peace of mind.

Is your Clean Router living up to its potential? With dozens of customizable settings and options, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the possibilities. Whether you’re new to Clean Router and don’t know where to start, or you’ve had a Clean Router for years and aren’t up on our latest features, here are five tips for having the best Clean Router protection.

1.Take your time on the set up wizard

Pretty basic, we know, but we want you to have a great Clean Router experience right from the start! If you have any questions, call us at 520-445-4673.

2.Complete your device list

Clean Router tracks the web footprint of every device that connects to your internet network. Nifty, huh? However, our records identify each device only by the IP address. Unless you have the IP address of every device in your home memorized, a lot of the information we collect for you won’t mean much. Go to Settings.CleanRouter.com, select “My Account” then “Device List, and give each device a “Friendly Name” so you’ll know at a glance who was on Facebook at 2am last night. We’re looking at you, Sophie!

3. Set your notifications

Did you know Clean Router can text you? Select “Notifications” in the “Reporting” section of the menu. You can enter any email address or phone number and select from a variety of options, all designed to keep you in the loop about your family’s internet activity. We recommend signing up for a daily report, a notification in real time when someone tries to access a blocked website, and another notification when someone bypasses the router.

4.Time Restrictions

You can create an individual schedule for each device in your home, so don’t be shy! Log into Settings.CleanRouter.com, open the “Scheduling” tab and click “Time Restrictions. Block Jimmy’s iPad during his daily tuba practice time, Sarah’s smart phone during homework time, and enforce device-free dinner time by turning off the internet from 6-7pm every day. Don’t forget to give each device a bedtime!

5.Bookmark Settings.CleanRouter.com

Now you can adjust your Clean Router settings anytime, anywhere! Type Settings.CleanRouter.com into any browser on any computer or mobile device, enter your password, and you can add or remove websites from your Black List, adjust your filter strength, turn off your home internet and more!

Wouldn’t you want to know instantly if your kids saw pornography? Now Clean Router will text you whenever your kids try to access a blocked website or bypass your filter!

Here’s how it works:

First, enter your phone number in the setup wizard. By default, text notifications are enabled.

You can adjust which numbers get texted as needed in your Clean Router settings (Settings.CleanRouter.com). On the Clean Router menu, select Reporting, then Notifications.

As you can see, this is also where you customize your email notifications.

After doing the setup wizard, you will receive this text:

Now, if someone connected to your network tries to access a blocked website, you’ll get a message.

The text will list which website Clean Router blocked, which computer or mobile device tried to access the website, and why Clean Router blocked the page. (Note: Don’t forget to name all the devices in your home at Settings.CleanRouter.com! Select “My Account” then “Device List” on the Clean Router menu. If the device isn’t named, the text will list the IP address.)

Then, if someone enters the password and bypasses the filter, you’ll get another message.

You pay for 100 megabytes per second (or 75, or 50, or 25), and yet your internet still feels slower than your kid on his way to bed. What gives? Now you can pinpoint the culprit behind your glacial internet speeds.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Step one: Log into your Clean Router account. Did you know you can log into your Clean Router account from anywhere at settings.cleanrouter.com? If you don’t have a Clean Router, go to CleanRouter.com and order one. Go on, we’ll wait!

Step two:

Select “Bandwidth Reporting.” It’s under “Reporting” in the navigation bar.

Step 3: Enable bandwidth monitoring by clicking the green button.

Your screen will look like this:

Clean Router has started monitoring your bandwidth, but there’s nothing to see yet. Hit refresh in about 10 minutes.

Scrolling down…

You can see which devices are online, how much bandwidth each device is using, and how much bandwidth is used per hour on your network. If you keep the bandwidth monitoring enabled, you can use the drop-down menu to see the data for previous days.

We are gradually rolling this feature out to all Clean Router users. Many of you already have this feature available; if you don’t see the Bandwidth Reporting option on your navigation bar, check back in a few days. Either way, everyone will have it within the next couple weeks!

Parents love how Clean Router records the browser history of all connected devices and provides daily email reports to keep them in the loop. In our latest update, we have improved this feature to make it even more user-friendly!

Clean Router users can now select which devices are included in the web browsing email report. This feature will allow users to remove overly chatty, and non-relevant devices from their reports, making them much easier to read. This is perfect for devices such as:

– Streaming boxes (i.e. Roku, Amazon FireStick, ChromeCast)

– DVRs

– Security camera systems

To change which devices are included in your email report, simply visit the “Friendly Names” page inside the Clean Router admin portal, and check (or uncheck) the “Email Report” box.

That’s it! Your daily email report is now more streamlined and customized to your family’s needs. Keeping tabs on your family online just got even easier!

As a parent, your responsibility is to know what your kids get up to online. But how? Browsing history can be erased within seconds, and recovering deleted history is next to impossible. Even if a computer’s browser history is intact, any incognito browsing will not appear. Standing over your kids’ shoulders 24/7 is an unattractive and impractical option for everyone involved. Is keeping tabs on your kids online a lost cause?

Clean Router believes online peace of mind is not just possible– it’s essential! For parents, online peace of mind absolutely includes knowing where your kids spend their time online, and we can make happen. Every night, we’ll email you a pdf of every website visited on your home in the last 24 hours. The log is organized by device, making it easy to know which family member needs to cut back on Facebook, and which family member may be venturing into sketchier online waters. Your report will also include the number of times each device was blocked by the filter or bypassed the filter. This will help you know if your bypass password has been compromised and if someone is trying to access blocked material.

Best of all, you can know the report is complete and accurate. There is no way to add or delete websites from the log, even if the sites may have been deleted from the computer’s browsing history, and sites visited through with incognito tabs will still appear.

Parents, knowing where your kids go online should be easy. Clean Router makes it as simple as opening an email.

If you have been researching online filtering options, you may have heard or read a bit about Circle, another online parental controls system. However, after trying Circle ourselves, we believe Clean Router can offer a superior filtering experience to Circle. In spite of a few similarities, Clean Router significantly differs from Circle in ways that will impact your family’s online peace of mind.

1) Circle’s complicated installation- Setting up Clean Router is as easy as plugging in a router, and our friendly support team walks every new customer through it. Installing Circle, though, was a multi-step process involving app downloads and connecting through multiple networks. For busy parents or grandparents, especially those not confident in their tech skills, Clean Router is faster and easier.

2) Circle’s fundamental design is flawed – Unlike Clean Router, Circle is not a router. Users plug into Circle into the network, and it uses something called ARP-spoofing or ARP-poisoning. Simply put, it tricks everything in the network to talk to Circle instead of your wireless router.

So what? The additional device adds an extra “hop” for all of your network traffic. Circle causes quite a bit of extra latency to all of your web traffic, slowing down the whole network. Circle also uses an old wireless protocol (802.11n), which also hurts your internet speed.

Speed aside, this ARP-poisoning also causes other problems. Many devices are incompatible, and we have even heard users report that Circle broke their entire network!

3) No filter – Unlike Clean Router, which checks every website in real time, Circle does not filter online content. Users can block certain categories of apps and create lists of approved and blocked websites, but we all know that the internet changes daily. Clean Router’s IntelliFilter checks every packet that is coming thru from the DNS layer all the way down to the very content itself. We also were disappointed in Circle’s “blocked” page. No reason is given for blocking a website, and the page itself scrolls through Disney content and links to Instagram and Twitter. Parents can imagine how distracting this would be for a kid trying to concentrate on homework, and some of the content presented on the blocked page, while not pornographic, was not quite kid-friendly.

4) No dynamic filtering – While Circle asks you to label a website as good or bad, Clean Router understands the internet just does not work that way. What do you do with a site like FoxNews or MSN? Not all the content may measure up to your family’s media standards, blocking an entire news platform would inhibit your online experience. This is exactly why dynamic filtering is so important. To ensure your family’s online safety, Clean Router checks every word and every picture of every website accessed on your internet network in real time.

5) No support – Need help configuring your filtering or figuring out what URL needs to be white-listed to get a particular site to work? Have a question about this feature or that feature? Good luck getting in touch with Circle! The website doesn’t list a support phone number, a email address, a chat option, or any other contact method. Clean Router provides award-winning US-based support. Skeptical? Give our guys a call at 520-445-4673, shoot us an email at Support@CleanRouter.com, or go to our website and chat with us live. We won’t be shy about besting Circle in this area!

6) iOS- and Android-only controls – The only mechanism that Circle provides for controlling your kids’ devices or managing your network is through an iOS or Android app. Need to access from a computer? No luck. On the other hand, Clean Router allows you to access your account from any computer or mobile device!

7) No emailed reports – Clean Router delivers a PDF report to your email nightly informing you of each device’s internet activity. And, we just rolled out our full Smart Reporting v2 that allows you even more control over these reports! This is not a feature offered by Circle.

8) Limited scheduling options- Circle only offers three scheduling options for devices: “BedTime” (a time for the internet to turn off for the evening), “Time Limits” (a limit on how much time each device can spend online per day), and “Pause” (turn the internet off temporarily). Clean Router’s scheduling feature allows users to set a schedule for each device in their home for any time of day and any day of the week! For example, if dinner time is always from 6pm to 7pm, you can automatically set the internet to turn off at 6pm every day. If you would like to offer more screen time on Saturdays than Tuesdays, Clean Router (but not Circle) lets you set a different schedule for each day of the week!

8) Keywords – Tired of your kid going to every Minecraft site? Enter “minecraft” into the keywords list, and Clean Router will block any site containing those words. For Circle users, respite from Minecraft requires hunting for hundreds of different domains and websites.

9) No YouTube filtering– With Circle, you’ll have to allow YouTube in all its sleazy glory or block it completely. CleanYouTube, our YouTube filtering service, offers your family the best of YouTube!

10) The bypass option– If you hit a page and need to bypass Circle, you’ll need to..

*Sign into the controls on Circle on your phone (since it doesn’t have any web controls)

*Add the website to an approved list

*Wait approximately 60 to 120 minutes (yes, 1 to 2 hours) for the page’s cache to clear

*Go back to your site.

And then, you have to remember to go and turn it back off!

Our bypass option made to be used– simple, fast, and secure.

For example, Victoria’s Secret is a popular resource for women’s clothing and cosmetics, but you may not want your twelve year old lingering over the sexy photos. When my wife needs to go to there, this is what she sees:

My wife can enter the password, choose 15, 30, or 60 minutes, and hit the Temporary Bypass page. Clean Router will unblock the site for the amount of time designated. She can do her shopping and leave without having to worry about remembering to re-block the website. In the time Circle users need to unblock a site, my wife can finish shopping, give herself a pedicure, AND go for a run!

11) Circle is “by Disney” – Circle has a content partnership with Disney. For users, this means Disney ads a-plenty and product-pushing galore. With such a direct funnel, be prepared for your kids to enter a whole new world of advertisements for the latest Disney gadgets and gizmos. After you have bought 15 copies of Frozen, and your kids have bought 20 episodes of “Hannah Montana” you might feel a little less hakuna matata. When you’re ready, Clean Router can help you let it go.

The Clean Router is truly the ultimate parental control, and we continue to work hard to make sure that your kids are safe online. We have taken industrial-level filtering, and scaled it down to something easy for parents to use. If you need any help, our award-winning support team is here to help you achieve online peace of mind. Come partner with us to block all online pornography from your home and take back control of the internet today!

Kids can spend hours a day on social media. Wouldn’t it be nice to limit their access to 15, 30, or 60 minute increments?

Victoria’s Secret can be a great place to purchase women’s clothing, but adolescent boys do not need to check out sexy swimsuit and lingerie advertisements. How can one internet filtering system meet the needs of all the members of a household?

Sometimes it’s better to be safe than sorry online. Is it possible to set strict filters without compromising internet access in your home?

Clean Router provides your family the flexibility to decide when certain content is permissible in your home through our temporary bypass system. Any time Clean Router blocks a website, this page appears:

For members of your household not privy to the Clean Router password, this will be the end of the road. More informed family members, however, can select a time period, enter the Clean Router password, and click “Temporary Bypass.”

For the amount of time designated, this website is exempt from Clean Router’s restrictions. When time is up, the site is blocked again. Users can request access again, but the password must be re-entered.

What does this mean for your family? Clean Router understands the internet is more than “bad sites” and “good sites.” While some content will never measure up to your family’s media standards, other websites have an appropriate time and place. We’ll let you decide precisely when that time and place is with conveniently and without compromising your online peace of mind.

Ready to protect your family with Clean Router? Click here to get started!

The internet has brought the world together in an incredible way. Individuals as far apart as Indonesia and New York can communicate instantaneously. Peruvians can keep up on French news, and Americans can watch Korean television shows!

Did you know some major internet filters only support domestic websites and English content? With almost 200 countries on our planet and roughly 6,000 languages, those filters are missing a large portion of the internet!

Because online pornography can and does appear on foreign websites, Clean Router filters every website, regardless of national origin. Our seven layers of IntelliFilter technology analyses content regardless of language.

Porn is porn in every country and every language. We know pornography entraps teenagers, erodes marriages, degrades the men and women involved, and attacks the best instincts within the individual. These effects don’t change because the content comes from a Russian website or is produced by an Asian company.

With the internet, your family can have the world at their fingertips. With Clean Router, you can know your family will only experience the safe portions of the online world.

Ready to protect your home and family with Clean Router? Click here to get started!

Internet access can seem binary– either you have the internet in your home, or you don’t. Having the internet in your home can expose your family to online pornography, real and fictional violent content, drug content, suggestive ads, raunchy articles, scams, and other dark aspects of our world. On the other hand, not providing your home with internet access in 2017 deprives them of wholesome and free entertainment, educational opportunities, awareness of current events, social connections, and even paying the bills and banking. What’s a twenty-first century family to do?

Clean Router offers families to engage with the internet wholesomely and productively. Your family’s rules become Clean Router’s rules with dozens of customizable features and filtering options. Best of all, you can adjust and readjust the Clean Router filters at any time, from anywhere! Just log into remote.cleanrouter.com from any computer or download our Remote Control app for easy on-the-go access!

Your family deserves more options than sleaze or 1950s technology. With Clean Router, you can have the internet YOUR way!